Nyarlathotep by H. P. Lovecraft
Nyarlathotep...the crawling chaos... I am the last... I will tell the audient
void...
I do not recall distinctly when it began, but it was months ago.
The general tension was horrible.
To a season of political and social upheaval was added a
strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger;
a danger widespread and all-embracing, such a danger as may be imagined only in the
most terrible phantasms of the night.
I recall that the people went about with pale and worried faces,
and whispered warnings and prophecies which no one dared
consciously repeat or acknowledge to himself that he had heard.
A sense of monstrous guilt was upon the land, and out of the abysses between the stars swept
chill currents that made men shiver in dark and lonely places.
There was a demoniac alteration in the sequence of the seasons
the autumn heat lingered fearsomely, and everyone felt that the world and perhaps
the universe had passed from the control of known gods or forces
to that of gods or forces which were unknown.
And it was then that Nyarlathotep came out of Egypt.
Who he was, none could tell,
but he was of the old native blood and looked like a Pharaoh.
The fellahin knelt when they saw him, yet could not say why.
He said he had risen up out of the blackness of twenty-seven
centuries, and that he had heard messages from places
not on this planet.
Into the lands of civilisation came Nyarlathotep, swarthy,
slender, and sinister,
always buying strange instruments of glass and metal and
combining them into instruments yet stranger.
He spoke much of the sciences of electricity and psychology
and gave exhibitions of power which sent his spectators away
speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude.
Men advised one another to see Nyarlathotep, and shuddered.
And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished,
for the small hours were rent with the screams of nightmare.
Never before had the screams of nightmare been such a public
problem; now the wise men almost wished they could
forbid sleep in the small hours,
that the shrieks of cities might less horribly disturb the pale,
pitying moon as it glimmered on green waters gliding under
bridges, and old steeples crumbling against a sickly
sky. I remember when Nyarlathotep came to my city
the great, the old,
the terrible city of unnumbered crimes.
My friend had told me of him, and of the impelling fascination and allurement
of his revelations,
and I burned with eagerness to explore his uttermost mysteries.
My friend said they were horrible and impressive beyond my
most fevered imaginings; and what was thrown on a screen in the darkened
room prophesied things none but Nyarlathotep dared
prophesy, and in the sputter of his sparks there was
taken from men that which had never been taken before yet which
shewed only in the eyes.
And I heard it hinted abroad that those who knew Nyarlathotep
looked on sights which others saw not. It was in the hot autumn that I went through
the night with the restless crowds to see Nyarlathotep;
through the stifling night and up the endless stairs into the
choking room.
And shadowed on a screen, I saw hooded forms amidst ruins,
and yellow evil faces peering from behind fallen monuments.
And I saw the world battling against blackness; against the waves of destruction from ultimate
space; whirling,
churning, struggling around the dimming,
cooling sun.
Then the sparks played amazingly around the heads of the
spectators, and hair stood up on end whilst shadows more
grotesque than I can tell came out and squatted on the heads.
And when I, who was colder and more scientific than the
rest, mumbled a trembling protest about "imposture"
and "static electricity," Nyarlathotep drove us all out,
down the dizzy stairs into the damp, hot,
deserted midnight streets.
I screamed aloud that I was not afraid; that I never could be afraid;
and others screamed with me for solace.
We swore to one another that the city was exactly the same,
and still alive; and when the electric lights began to fade
we cursed the company over and over again,
and laughed at the queer faces we made. I believe we felt something coming down from
the greenish moon, for when we began to depend on its light we
drifted into curious involuntary marching formations and
seemed to know our destinations though we dared not think of
them.
Once we looked at the pavement and found the blocks loose and
displaced by grass, with scarce a line of rusted metal to shew
where the tramways had run.
And again we saw a tram-car, lone,
windowless, dilapidated,
and almost on its side.
When we gazed around the horizon, we could not find the third tower by the river,
and noticed that the silhouette of the second tower was ragged
at the top.
Then we split up into narrow columns, each of which seemed drawn in a different
direction.
One disappeared in a narrow alley to the left, leaving only the echo of a shocking moan.
Another filed down a weed-choked subway entrance, howling with a laughter that was mad.
My own column was sucked toward the open country, and presently I felt a chill which was not
of the hot autumn; for as we stalked out on the dark moor,
we beheld around us the hellish moon-glitter of evil snows.
Trackless, inexplicable snows,
swept asunder in one direction only, where lay a gulf all the blacker for its glittering
walls.
The column seemed very thin indeed as it plodded dreamily into
the gulf.
I lingered behind, for the black rift in the green-litten snow
was frightful, and I thought I had heard the reverberations
of a disquieting wail as my companions vanished;
but my power to linger was slight.
As if beckoned by those who had gone before, I half-floated between the titanic snowdrifts,
quivering and afraid, into the sightless vortex of the unimaginable.
Screamingly sentient, dumbly delirious,
only the gods that were can tell.
A sickened, sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are
not hands, and whirled blindly past ghastly midnights
of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds with sores that were
cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars
and make them flicker low.
Beyond the worlds vague ghosts of monstrous things;
half-seen columns of unsanctifled temples that rest on
nameless rocks beneath space and reach up to dizzy vacua above
the spheres of light and darkness.
And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the
muffled, maddening beating of drums,
and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from
inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time;
the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly,
awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic,
tenebrous ultimate gods the blind, voiceless,
mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep.